A stone tool is, in the most general sense, any tool made either partially or entirely out of stone. Although stone tool-dependent societies and cultures still exist today, most stone tools are associated with prehistoric (particularly Stone Age) cultures that have become extinct.

Archaeologists Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

often study such prehistoric societies, and refer to the study of stone tools as lithic analysis.

Ethnoarchaeology Ethnoarchaeology is the ethnographic study of peoples for archaeological reasons, usually through the study of the material remains of a society (see David & Kramer 2001). Ethnoarchaeology aids archaeologists in reconstructing ancient lifeways by ...

has been a valuable research field in order to further the understanding and cultural implications of stone tool use and manufacture. Stone has been used to make a wide variety of different tools throughout history, including arrowheads,

spear A spear is a pole weapon consisting of a shaft, usually of wood, with a pointed head. The head may be simply the sharpened end of the shaft itself, as is the case with fire hardened spears, or it may be made of a more durable material fasten ...

heads,

hand axe A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or che ...

s, and querns. Stone tools may be made of either ground stone or

knapped stone Knapping is the shaping of flint, chert, obsidian, or other conchoidal fracturing stone through the process of lithic reduction to manufacture stone tools, strikers for flintlock firearms, or to produce flat-faced stones for building or facing ...

, the latter fashioned by a flintknapper. Knapped stone tools are made from cryptocrystalline materials such as

chert Chert () is a hard, fine-grained sedimentary rock composed of microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline quartz, the mineral form of silicon dioxide (SiO2). Chert is characteristically of biological origin, but may also occur inorganically as a ...

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and sta ...

, radiolarite,

chalcedony Chalcedony ( , or ) is a cryptocrystalline form of silica, composed of very fine intergrowths of quartz and moganite. These are both silica minerals, but they differ in that quartz has a trigonal crystal structure, while moganite is monocl ...

, obsidian,

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90% of a ...

, and

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tec ...

via a process known as

lithic reduction In archaeology, in particular of the Stone Age, lithic reduction is the process of fashioning stones or rocks from their natural state into tools or weapons by removing some parts. It has been intensely studied and many archaeological indust ...

. One simple form of reduction is to strike stone flakes from a nucleus (core) of material using a

hammerstone In archaeology, a hammerstone is a hard cobble used to strike off lithic flakes from a lump of tool stone during the process of lithic reduction. The hammerstone is a rather universal stone tool which appeared early in most regions of the w ...

or similar hard hammer fabricator. If the goal of the reduction strategy is to produce flakes, the remnant lithic core may be discarded once it has become too small to use. In some strategies, however, a flintknapper reduces the core to a rough unifacial, or bifacial

preform Preform may refer to: * Preform, a piece of glass used to draw an optical fiber * Preform, a piece of polyethylene terephthalate test tube shaped form blown into a completed bottle * Preform, an incomplete and unused basic form of a stone tool ...

, which is further reduced using soft hammer flaking techniques or by

pressure flaking In archaeology, in particular of the Stone Age, lithic reduction is the process of fashioning stones or rocks from their natural state into tools or weapons by removing some parts. It has been intensely studied and many archaeological industri ...

the edges. More complex forms of reduction include the production of highly standardized blades, which can then be fashioned into a variety of tools such as scrapers,

knives A knife ( : knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least 2.5 million years ago, as evidenced ...

sickle A sickle, bagging hook, reaping-hook or grasshook is a single-handed agricultural tool designed with variously curved blades and typically used for harvesting, or reaping, grain crops or cutting succulent forage chiefly for feeding livestock, ...

s, and

microliths A microlith is a small stone tool usually made of flint or chert and typically a centimetre or so in length and half a centimetre wide. They were made by humans from around 35,000 to 3,000 years ago, across Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. Th ...

. In general terms, Knapped stone tools are nearly ubiquitous in all pre-metal-using societies because they are easily manufactured, the tool stone is usually plentiful, and they are easy to transport and sharpen.

Evolution

Archaeologists classify stone tools into

industries Industry may refer to: Economics * Industry (economics), a generally categorized branch of economic activity * Industry (manufacturing), a specific branch of economic activity, typically in factories with machinery * The wider industrial secto ...

(also known as complexes or technocomplexes) that share distinctive technological or morphological characteristics. In 1969 in the 2nd edition of ''World Prehistory'', Grahame Clark proposed an evolutionary progression of flint-knapping in which the "dominant lithic technologies" occurred in a fixed sequence from Mode 1 through Mode 5. He assigned to them relative dates: Modes 1 and 2 to the Lower

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός '' palaios'', "old" and λίθος ''lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone too ...

, 3 to the

Middle Palaeolithic The Middle Paleolithic (or Middle Palaeolithic) is the second subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age as it is understood in Europe, Africa and Asia. The term Middle Stone Age is used as an equivalent or a synonym for the Middle Paleo ...

, 4 to the

Upper Paleolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coi ...

, and 5 to the

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic is often used synonymo ...

, though there were other lithic technologies outside these Modes. Each region had its own timeline for the succession of the Modes: for example, Mode 1 was in use in Europe long after it had been replaced by Mode 2 in Africa. Clark's scheme was adopted enthusiastically by the archaeological community. One of its advantages was the simplicity of terminology; for example, the Mode 1 / Mode 2 Transition. The transitions are currently of greatest interest. Consequently, in the literature the stone tools used in the period of the

are divided into four "modes", each of which designates a different form of complexity, and which in most cases followed a rough chronological order.

Pre-Mode I

;Kenya Stone tools found from 2011 to 2014 at the Lomekwi archeology site near

Lake Turkana Lake Turkana (), formerly known as Lake Rudolf, is a lake in the Kenyan Rift Valley, in northern Kenya, with its far northern end crossing into Ethiopia. It is the world's largest permanent desert lake and the world's largest alkaline lake ...

in Kenya, are dated to be 3.3 million years old, and predate the genus ''Homo'' by about one million years. The oldest known ''Homo'' fossil is about 2.4-2.3 million years old compared to the 3.3 million year old stone tools. The stone tools may have been made by ''

Australopithecus afarensis ''Australopithecus afarensis'' is an extinct species of australopithecine which lived from about 3.9–2.9 million years ago (mya) in the Pliocene of East Africa. The first fossils were discovered in the 1930s, but major fossil finds would not ...

'', the species whose best fossil example is Lucy, which inhabited East Africa at the same time as the date of the oldest stone tools, a yet unidentified species, or by ''Kenyanthropus platyops'' (a 3.2 to 3.5-million-year-old

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58 Dating of the tools was by dating volcanic ash layers in which the tools were found and dating the magnetic signature (pointing north or south due to reversal of the magnetic poles) of the rock at the site. ;Ethiopia Grooved, cut and fractured animal bone fossils, made by using stone tools, were found in Dikika,

Ethiopia Ethiopia, , om, Itiyoophiyaa, so, Itoobiya, ti, ኢትዮጵያ, Ítiyop'iya, aa, Itiyoppiya officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a landlocked country in the Horn of Africa. It shares borders with Eritrea to the Er ...

near (200 yards) the remains of Selam, a young ''

'' girl who lived about 3.3 million years ago.

Mode I: The Oldowan Industry

The earliest stone tools in the life span of the genus ''

Homo ''Homo'' () is the genus that emerged in the (otherwise extinct) genus '' Australopithecus'' that encompasses the extant species ''Homo sapiens'' (modern humans), plus several extinct species classified as either ancestral to or closely relat ...

'' are Mode 1 tools, and come from what has been termed the Oldowan Industry, named after the type of site (many sites, actually) found in

Olduvai Gorge The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-si ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

, where they were discovered in large quantities. Oldowan tools were characterised by their simple construction, predominantly using core forms. These cores were river pebbles, or rocks similar to them, that had been struck by a spherical

to cause

conchoidal fracture Conchoidal fracture describes the way that brittle materials break or fracture when they do not follow any natural planes of separation. Mindat.org defines conchoidal fracture as follows: "a fracture with smooth, curved surfaces, typically sli ...

s removing flakes from one surface, creating an edge and often a sharp tip. The blunt end is the proximal surface; the sharp, the distal. Oldowan is a percussion technology. Grasping the proximal surface, the hominid brought the distal surface down hard on an object he wished to detach or shatter, such as a bone or tuber. The earliest known Oldowan tools yet found date from 2.6 million years ago, during the Lower Palaeolithic period, and have been uncovered at Gona in Ethiopia. After this date, the Oldowan Industry subsequently spread throughout much of Africa, although archaeologists are currently unsure which Hominan species first developed them, with some speculating that it was ''

Australopithecus garhi ''Australopithecus garhi'' is a species of australopithecine from the Bouri Formation in the Afar Region of Ethiopia 2.6–2.5 million years ago (mya) during the Early Pleistocene. The first remains were described in 1999 based on several sk ...

'', and others believing that it was in fact ''

Homo habilis ''Homo habilis'' ("handy man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Early Pleistocene of East and South Africa about 2.31 million years ago to 1.65 million years ago (mya). Upon species description in 1964, ''H. habilis'' was highly ...

''. ''Homo habilis'' was the hominin who used the tools for most of the Oldowan in Africa, but at about 1.9-1.8 million years ago

Homo erectus ''Homo erectus'' (; meaning " upright man") is an extinct species of archaic human from the Pleistocene, with its earliest occurrence about 2 million years ago. Several human species, such as ''H. heidelbergensis'' and ''H. antecessor' ...

inherited them. The Industry flourished in southern and eastern Africa between 2.6 and 1.7 million years ago, but was also spread out of Africa and into

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...

by travelling bands of ''H. erectus'', who took it as far east as

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...

by 1.8 million years ago and

Northern China Northern China () and Southern China () are two approximate regions within China. The exact boundary between these two regions is not precisely defined and only serve to depict where there appears to be regional differences between the climates ...

by 1.6 million years ago.

Mode II: The Acheulean Industry

Biface (trihedral) Amar Merdeg, Mehran, Ilam, Lower Paleolithic, National Museum of Iran

Eventually, more complex Mode 2 tools began to be developed through the Acheulean Industry, named after the site of Saint-Acheul in France. The Acheulean was characterised not by the core, but by the

biface A hand axe (or handaxe or Acheulean hand axe) is a prehistoric stone tool with two faces that is the longest-used tool in human history, yet there is no academic consensus on what they were used for. It is made from stone, usually flint or che ...

, the most notable form of which was the

. The Acheulean first appears in the archaeological record as early as 1.7 million years ago in the

West Turkana Turkana County is a county in the former Rift Valley Province of Kenya. It is Kenya's largest county by land area (followed by Marsabit County), and also its northwesternmost. It is bordered by the countries of Uganda to the west; South Sudan an ...

area of

Kenya ) , national_anthem = " Ee Mungu Nguvu Yetu"() , image_map = , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Nairobi , coordinates = , largest_city = Nairobi , ...

and contemporaneously in southern Africa. The Leakeys, excavators at Olduvai, defined a "Developed Oldowan" Period in which they believed they saw evidence of an overlap in Oldowan and Acheulean. In their species-specific view of the two industries, Oldowan equated to ''H. habilis'' and Acheulean to ''H. erectus''. Developed Oldowan was assigned to ''habilis'' and Acheulean to ''erectus''. Subsequent dates on ''H. erectus'' pushed the fossils back to well before Acheulean tools; that is, ''H. erectus'' must have initially used Mode 1. There was no reason to think, therefore, that Developed Oldowan had to be ''habilis''; it could have been ''erectus''. Opponents of the view divide Developed Oldowan between Oldowan and Acheulean. There is no question, however, that ''habilis'' and ''erectus'' coexisted, as ''habilis'' fossils are found as late as 1.4 million years ago. Meanwhile, African ''H. erectus'' developed Mode 2. In any case a wave of Mode 2 then spread across Eurasia, resulting in use of both there. ''H. erectus'' may not have been the only hominin to leave Africa; European fossils are sometimes associated with '' Homo ergaster'', a contemporary of ''H. erectus'' in Africa. In contrast to an Oldowan tool, which is the result of a fortuitous and probably ex tempore operation to obtain one sharp edge on a stone, an Acheulean tool is a planned result of a manufacturing process. The manufacturer begins with a blank, either a larger stone or a slab knocked off a larger rock. From this blank he or she removes large flakes, to be used as cores. Standing a core on edge on an anvil stone, he or she hits the exposed edge with centripetal blows of a hard hammer to roughly shape the implement. Then the piece must be worked over again, or retouched, with a soft hammer of wood or bone to produce a tool finely Knapped all over consisting of two convex surfaces intersecting in a sharp edge. Such a tool is used for slicing; concussion would destroy the edge and cut the hand. Some Mode 2 tools are disk-shaped, others ovoid, others leaf-shaped and pointed, and others elongated and pointed at the distal end, with a blunt surface at the proximal end, obviously used for drilling. Mode 2 tools are used for butchering; not being composite (having no haft) they are not very appropriate killing instruments. The killing must have been done some other way. Mode 2 tools are larger than Oldowan. The blank was ported to serve as an ongoing source of flakes until it was finally retouched as a finished tool itself. Edges were often sharpened by further retouching.

Mode III: The Mousterian Industry

Eventually, the Acheulean in Europe was replaced by a lithic technology known as the Mousterian Industry, which was named after the site of Le Moustier in France, where examples were first uncovered in the 1860s. Evolving from the Acheulean, it adopted the

Levallois technique The Levallois technique () is a name given by archaeologists to a distinctive type of stone knapping developed around 250,000 to 300,000 years ago during the Middle Palaeolithic period. It is part of the Mousterian stone tool industry, and wa ...

to produce smaller and sharper knife-like tools as well as scrapers. Also known as the "prepared core technique", flakes are struck from worked cores and then subsequently retouched. The Mousterian Industry was developed and used primarily by the Neanderthals, a native European and Middle Eastern hominin species, but a broadly similar industry is contemporaneously widespread in Africa. Middle Paleolithic stone tool known as Mousterian point discovered in the Darai Rockshelter in the Sirwan valley of Hawraman, Zagros

Middle Paleolithic stone tool known as Mousterian point discovered in the Darai Rockshelter in the Sirwan valley of Hawraman, Zagros

Mode IV: The Aurignacian Industry

The widespread use of long

blade A blade is the portion of a tool, weapon, or machine with an edge that is designed to puncture, chop, slice or scrape surfaces or materials. Blades are typically made from materials that are harder than those they are to be used on. Historica ...

s (rather than flakes) of the

Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coi ...

Mode 4 industries appeared during the

between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, although blades were produced in small quantities much earlier by Neanderthals. The

Aurignacian The Aurignacian () is an archaeological industry of the Upper Paleolithic associated with European early modern humans (EEMH) lasting from 43,000 to 26,000 years ago. The Upper Paleolithic developed in Europe some time after the Levant, where ...

culture seems to have been the first to rely largely on blades. The use of blades exponentially increases the efficiency of core usage compared to the Levallois flake technique, which had a similar advantage over Acheulean technology which was worked from cores.

Mode V: The Microlithic Industries

Mode 5 stone tools involve the production of microliths, which were used in composite tools, mainly fastened to a shaft. Examples include the Magdalenian culture. Such a technology makes much more efficient use of available materials like flint, although required greater skill in manufacturing the small flakes. Mounting sharp flint edges in a wood or bone handle is the key innovation in microliths, essentially because the handle gives the user protection against the flint and also improves leverage of the device.

Neolithic industries

HMB Steinaxtmanufaktur Vinelz Jungsteinzeit 2700 BC

In prehistoric Japan, ground stone tools appear during the

Japanese Paleolithic The is the period of human inhabitation in Japan predating the development of pottery, generally before 10,000 BC. The starting dates commonly given to this period are from around 40,000 BC; although any date of human presence before 35,000 BC ...

period, that lasted from around 40,000 BC to 14,000 BC. Elsewhere, ground stone tools became important during the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several part ...

period beginning about 10,000 BC. These ground or polished implements are manufactured from larger-grained materials such as

jade Jade is a mineral used as jewellery or for ornaments. It is typically green, although may be yellow or white. Jade can refer to either of two different silicate minerals: nephrite (a silicate of calcium and magnesium in the amphibole gro ...

and

jadeite Jadeite is a pyroxene mineral with composition Na Al Si2 O6. It is hard (Mohs hardness of about 6.5 to 7.0), very tough, and dense, with a specific gravity of about 3.4. It is found in a wide range of colors, but is most often found in shades ...

, greenstone and some forms of

rhyolite Rhyolite ( ) is the most silica-rich of volcanic rocks. It is generally glassy or fine-grained ( aphanitic) in texture, but may be porphyritic, containing larger mineral crystals ( phenocrysts) in an otherwise fine-grained groundmass. The min ...

which are not suitable for flaking. The greenstone industry was important in the English Lake District, and is known as the Langdale axe industry. Ground stone implements included

adze An adze (; alternative spelling: adz) is an ancient and versatile cutting tool similar to an axe but with the cutting edge perpendicular to the handle rather than parallel. Adzes have been used since the Stone Age. They are used for smoothing ...

celt The Celts (, see pronunciation for different usages) or Celtic peoples () are. "CELTS location: Greater Europe time period: Second millennium B.C.E. to present ancestry: Celtic a collection of Indo-European peoples. "The Celts, an ancien ...

s, and axes, which were manufactured using a labour-intensive, time-consuming method of repeated grinding against an abrasive stone, often using water as a lubricant. Because of their coarse surfaces, some ground stone tools were used for grinding plant foods and were polished not just by intentional shaping, but also by use. Manos are hand stones used in conjunction with metates for grinding corn or grain. Polishing increased the intrinsic mechanical strength of the axe. Polished stone axes were important for the widespread clearance of woods and forest during the Neolithic period, when crop and livestock farming developed on a large scale. They are distributed very widely and were traded over great distances since the best rock types were often very local. They also became venerated objects, and were frequently buried in

long barrow Long barrows are a style of monument constructed across Western Europe in the fifth and fourth millennia BCE, during the Early Neolithic period. Typically constructed from earth and either timber or stone, those using the latter material repre ...

s or

round barrow A round barrow is a type of tumulus and is one of the most common types of archaeological monuments. Although concentrated in Europe, they are found in many parts of the world, probably because of their simple construction and universal purpose. ...

s with their former owners. During the

period, large axes were made from flint nodules by knapping a rough shape, a so-called "rough-out". Such products were traded across a wide area. The rough-outs were then polished to give the surface a fine finish to create the axe head. Polishing not only increased the final strength of the product but also meant that the head could penetrate wood more easily. Mar Dalan-Rawansar-Kermanshah

There were many sources of supply, including Grimes Graves in Suffolk, Cissbury in Sussex and Spiennes near

Mons Mons (; German and nl, Bergen, ; Walloon and pcd, Mont) is a city and municipality of Wallonia, and the capital of the province of Hainaut, Belgium. Mons was made into a fortified city by Count Baldwin IV of Hainaut in the 12th century. ...

in Belgium to mention but a few. In

Britain Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

, there were numerous small quarries in

downland Downland, chalkland, chalk downs or just downs are areas of open chalk hills, such as the North Downs. This term is used to describe the characteristic landscape in southern England where chalk is exposed at the surface. The name "downs" is deriv ...

areas where flint was removed for local use, for example. Many other rocks were used to make axes from stones, including the Langdale axe industry as well as numerous other sites such as

Penmaenmawr Penmaenmawr (, ) is a town and community (Wales), community in Conwy County Borough, Wales, which was formerly in the parish of Dwygyfylchi and the traditional county of Caernarfonshire. It is on the North Wales coast between Conwy and Llanfair ...

and

Tievebulliagh Tievebulliagh () is a mountain in the Glens of Antrim, Northern Ireland. It forms part of the watershed between Glenaan to the north and Glenballyemon to the south. It is situated about 4.4 km from Cushendall. Geology Tievebulliagh is ...

in Co Antrim,

Ulster Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label=Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kin ...

. In Langdale, there many

outcrop An outcrop or rocky outcrop is a visible exposure of bedrock or ancient superficial deposits on the surface of the Earth. Features Outcrops do not cover the majority of the Earth's land surface because in most places the bedrock or superficia ...

s of the greenstone were exploited, and knapped where the stone was extracted. The sites exhibit piles of waste flakes, as well as rejected rough-outs. Polishing improved the mechanical strength of the tools, so increasing their life and effectiveness. Many other tools were developed using the same techniques. Such products were traded across the country and abroad.

Aboriginal Australian use

Stone axes from 35,000 years ago are the earliest known use of a stone tool in Australia. Other stone tools varied in type and use among various

Aboriginal Australian Aboriginal Australians are the various Indigenous peoples of the Mainland Australia, Australian mainland and many of its islands, such as Tasmania, Fraser Island, Hinchinbrook Island, the Tiwi Islands, and Groote Eylandt, but excluding the T ...

peoples, dependent on geographical regions and the type and structure of the tools varied among the different cultural and linguistic groups. The locations of the various artefacts, as well as whole geologic features, demarcated territorial and cultural boundaries of various linguistic and cultural groups' lands. They developed trade networks, and showed sophistication in working many different types of stone for many different uses, including as tools, food utensils and weapons, and modified their stone tools over the millennia to adapt to changing environments. Oral traditions carried the skills down through the ages. Complex stone tools were used by the

Gunditjmara The Gunditjmara or Gunditjamara, also known as Dhauwurd Wurrung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of southwestern Victoria. They are the traditional owners of the areas now encompassing Warrnambool, Port Fairy, Woolsthorpe and Portland. T ...

of western Victoria until relatively recently. Many examples are now held in museums. Flaked stone tools were made by extracting a sharp fragment of stone from a larger piece, called a core, by hitting it with a "hammerstone". Both the flakes and the hammerstones could be used as tools. The best types of stone for these tools are hard, brittle stones, rich in

silica Silicon dioxide, also known as silica, is an oxide of silicon with the chemical formula , most commonly found in nature as quartz and in various living organisms. In many parts of the world, silica is the major constituent of sand. Silica is o ...

, such as

, flint, silcrete and

quartz Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...

(the latter particularly in the Kimberleys of

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to ...

). These were quarried from

bedrock In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material ( regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet. Definition Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material. An exposed portion of be ...

or collected as pebbles from watercourses and beaches, and often carried for long distances. The flake could be used immediately for cutting or scraping, but were sometimes modified in a process called reduction to sharpen or resharpen the flake. Across northern Australia, especially in

Arnhem Land Arnhem Land is a historical region of the Northern Territory of Australia, with the term still in use. It is located in the north-eastern corner of the territory and is around from the territory capital, Darwin. In 1623, Dutch East India Company ...

, the "Leilira blade", a rectangular stone flake shaped by striking quartzite or silcrete stone, was used as a spear tip and also as a knife, sometimes long. Tasmania did not have spears or stone axes, but the peoples there used tools which were adapted to the climate and environment, such as the use of

spongolite {{unreferenced, date=February 2019 Spongolite is a stone made almost entirely from fossilised sponges. It is light and porous. The silica spicules fossilised with the sponges makes the material hazardous to handle by being highly abrasive. Becau ...

. In north-western Australia, "Kimberley point", a small triangular stone point, was created using

kangaroo Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae (macropods, meaning "large foot"). In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern ...

bone which had been shaped with stone into an awl, to make small serrations in the blade. Apart from being used as weapons and for cutting, grinding ( grindstones), piercing and pounding, some stones, notable

ochre Ochre ( ; , ), or ocher in American English, is a natural clay earth pigment, a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produce ...

s, were used as

pigment A pigment is a colored material that is completely or nearly insoluble in water. In contrast, dyes are typically soluble, at least at some stage in their use. Generally dyes are often organic compounds whereas pigments are often inorganic comp ...

for painting.

Modern uses

Stone tools are still one of the most successful technologies used by humans. The invention of the

flintlock Flintlock is a general term for any firearm that uses a flint-striking ignition mechanism, the first of which appeared in Western Europe in the early 16th century. The term may also apply to a particular form of the mechanism itself, also known ...

gun mechanism in the sixteenth century produced a demand for specially shaped gunflints. The gunflint industry survived until the middle of the twentieth century in some places, including in the English town of Brandon. Threshing boards with lithic flakes are used in agriculture from Neolithic, and are still used today in the regions where agriculture has not been mechanized and industrialized. Glassy stones (flint, quartz,

jasper Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref> ...

agate Agate () is a common rock formation, consisting of chalcedony and quartz as its primary components, with a wide variety of colors. Agates are primarily formed within volcanic and metamorphic rocks. The ornamental use of agate was common in ...

) were used with a variety of iron pyrite or

marcasite The mineral marcasite, sometimes called “white iron pyrite”, is iron sulfide (FeS2) with orthorhombic crystal structure. It is physically and crystallographically distinct from pyrite, which is iron sulfide with cubic crystal structure. Bot ...

stones as percussion fire starter tools. That was the most common method of producing fire in pre-industrial societies. Stones were later superseded by use of steel,

ferrocerium Ferrocerium (also known in Europe as Auermetall) is a synthetic pyrophoric alloy of mischmetal ( cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, other trace lanthanides and some iron – about 95% lanthanides and 5% iron) hardened by blending in oxid ...

and matches. For specialist purposes

glass knives A glass knife is a knife with a blade made of glass, with a fracture line forming an extremely sharp cutting edge. Glass knives were used in antiquity due to their natural sharpness and the ease with which they could be manufactured. In modern el ...

are still made and used today, particularly for cutting thin sections for

electron microscopy An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of accelerated electrons as a source of illumination. As the wavelength of an electron can be up to 100,000 times shorter than that of visible light photons, electron microscopes have a ...

in a technique known as

microtomy A microtome (from the Greek ''mikros'', meaning "small", and ''temnein'', meaning "to cut") is a cutting tool used to produce extremely thin slices of material known as ''sections''. Important in science, microtomes are used in microscopy, allow ...

. Freshly cut blades are always used since the sharpness of the edge is very great. These knives are made from high-quality manufactured glass, however, not from natural raw materials such as chert or obsidian. Surgical knives made from obsidian are still used in some delicate surgeries, as they cause less damage to tissues than surgical knives and the resulting wounds heal more quickly. In 1975, American archaeologist Don Crabtree manufactured obsidian scalpels which were used for surgery on his own body.

Tool stone

In archaeology, a tool stone is a type of stone that is used to manufacture stone tools.

References

External links

* * * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Stone Tool Tools Archaeological artefact types Primitive technology Stone objects